No web hosting company is perfect, but you should always get the best value for your money. You should be able to live with the company for the long term at the price you’re willing to pay. If your current web hosting service is not meeting your needs, 2014 is a great time to switch to a different provider. Before you sign up for anything, make sure to do your homework. How to identify the best hosting company of 2013? Always look at price, uptime, reliability, features and customer support—these should be great if not excellent.

Price Range

Businesses that invest in a great hosting service usually see a boost in customer spending and retention. But this doesn’t always mean that the most expensive service is the best option. Consider the type of website you’re running. Is it a personal blog or a large e-commerce website? For about $1-2 a month, you can effectively host a blog or small business website. If you need all the bells and whistles, however, it’s worth paying $5 or more for a solid hosting company.

Reliability and Bandwidth

99 percent uptime may seem high to you, but it actually means 7 hours of downtime per month. Sign up for a service that guarantees at least 99.5 percent uptime and comes with a refund guarantee if the uptime drops below what is stated in the contract. Also read the fine print on data transfer and bandwidth use—your hosting company’s definition of “unlimited” may be different from yours.

Features and 2013 Trends

At the very least, your hosting service should support all common scripts that let you customize your website. If you have an e-commerce site, SSL (secure socket layers) and shopping cart features are crucial. While traditional shared hosting services provide these features, you’ll see virtual private servers offering them in 2013 as cloud services become mainstream. The beauty of cloud hosting is having a central location for all of your data and getting rid of the need to sign up for multiple hosting accounts. Hosting services are also jumping on the green bandwagon, as customers look for companies with tiny carbon footprints or those who derive power from green sources.

Suggestions

Web hosting review website Webhostingreviewplanet.com lists the following companies in their top five:

Yahoo! Web Hosting

The website ranks Yahoo!’s web hosting service as number 1. The name is the big draw for customers, but Yahoo!’s hosting service is surprisingly decent. It’s one of the cheapest hosting services in the market—for $2.62, you get free setup, free domain, 100GB disk space and 24/7 technical support. It also comes with a 30-day money back guarantee.

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting must be doing something right for all the awards it’s been getting (3-Star CNET Certification and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau among them). The price is a jump from Yahoo! at $5.95, but you get unlimited disk space, free domain and setup, Google and Yahoo! credits, 90-day money back guarantee and U.S.-based 24/7 tech support.

BlueHost

BlueHost has been around since 1996, and it’s one of the best-rated hosting companies available. BlueHost has only one plan, which can be a pro or con depending on your needs. For $6.95, you get free domain and setup, unlimited disk space and bandwidth and search engine credits. But the best part is their “anytime” money-back guarantee.

HostMonster

HostMonster is another established hosting provider. For the same price ($6.95) as BlueHost, you get unlimited disk space and bandwidth, free setup and domains, Google credits and award-winning tech support. Great for nonprofits and small businesses.

JaguarPC

JaguarPC gets the highest ratings for pricing, which is a competitive $4.95 per month. The company offers free setup and domain, unlimited disk space and a 45-day money back guarantee.

How to Install WordPress Manually on Hostgator

Hostgator Features:

Hostgator is the most popular hosting provider services and largest privately owned company in the world. It has now more than 8 million domains and 12,000 servers under management. Over 500 companies, including 200 countries and more than 400,000 satisfied customers depend on Hostgator for their business requirements. The resons why should you go with Hostgator are as follows:

• Hostgator has a world class SoftLayer datacenter, which range from 22,000 to over 78,000 square feet. The place is having high class power supply system and uses HVAC technology. It will ensure your data safety.

• A dedicated team for software monitoring to guarantee that all servers are up 24×7.

• Unlimited features at very low cost. Just on the amount of $3.96/month, they offer unlimited storage, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited Email account, 99.9% uptime, and unlimited transfer bandwidth. If you are unsatisfied with any feature then you can claim 45 days money back guarantee.

• Free site builder tools which includes 52 website building scripts, over 4,500 free templates, and free shopping cart software.

• 24 hour customer support to sort out all queries in timely manner, live chat system, countless videos tutorials and forum questions are already available on the official website.

Installing WordPress:

The complete process can be divided into following two steps:

1. Generating Database details

2. Installing WordPress manually

1. Generating Database details:

• Login your cPanel and from Database block and click on MySQL Databases.

• Create a new database and provide a name to it. ‘demo’ is given in the following example.

• Create a new database user. In MySQL user, select a new database user and provide the name and password for this. Remember this entry as it will be used again in WordPress Installation.

• Now provide this user privileges. You will be redirected to a window and select “All Privileges”

• Now select this user to manage your already created Database. Go to “Add user to Database”, choose from the database name and user and the click on Add.

This will complete the database creation. Now you need to add a domain if you have not created yet.

Uploading WordPress Files:

Now you can visit your “File Manager” section of your domain.

If you don’t have WordPress files then you can simply download it from official WordPress website and only in .zip format. Save it in your PC.

Now on File Manager window click on Upload Button. It will open a new Tab and select your WordPress zip file to upload from here.

Once file has been completed then extract the zip file by selecting the file and clicking on Extract from the top panel. It will then ask you to select the path where files are to be extracted. Don’t make any changes and click on Extract Files.

After the process complete, a folder might be created with the name wordpress. Move this folder to the main domain folder. Open the wordpress folder and then click on Select All then click on move. A pop will appear then chose the main domain path and click on Move Files.

It will move all the wordpress files to main domain so that you can install the WordPress on main domain. After that you can delete the previous wordpress folder and make it empty.

Installing WordPress manually:

• After completing the above step, you have uploaded the required thing to install WordPress. Now you need to create a config file. This can be done in two ways: either edit the wp-config.php file in WordPress or simply type your hosting URL and it will ask to “Create a Configuration File.” (Refer the image below)

• Fill out the information regarding your database you just created like Database name, Database username and Database password. Click on Submit after completion.

If all the information is correct then you will be prompt to “Run the Install” message. Click on the message and provide the login information for your WordPress Dashboard. This will complete the WordPress Installation on Hostgator.